There they were, all accounted for, all two dozen of them, sleeping under a shade tree. The does all appeared healthy, and most importantly, they were alive. Josie and the other bunnies wore tags on their ears that had the numbers 1-20 and all had the words "Cohashed".

"What do you think Cohashed means, Judy?" Nick asked, tiptoeing through the bunny bodies, trying not to step on them.

Judy's ears drooped and her eyes looked as if a shadow had been cast over them. "It is a term we in the burrows use for a miscarriage. It comes from the name of a plant, Black Cohosh, which causes lots of women to lose their litters once eaten, it's generally used during hard times like a drought or depression when rabbits can't afford to feed their children." Judy knelt by the sleeping body of her sister. "But I don't think Josie was pregnant, Bunnies usually wait until after marriage to have unprotected sex."

Nick's eyes widened in surprise and amusement, and in response she shot him a glare. "Oh come on Nick, you can't honestly think that we are some pure, no sex until marriage society, unless you take hormone suppressants, we are all fucking like, well, rabbits, till the day we die."

Nick had a smug grin on his face as he looked down at Judy. "Hot" He said, he let a toothy grin spread on his face.

Judy rolled her eyes. "As if, Wilde, you foxes have so little children you probably spend the wedding night texting and ignoring each other." She snapped a photo of the scene.

Nick chuckled. "I'll have you know, Miss Horny Hopps, that we foxes mate quite frequently, we just happen to be choosy about who we do it with. We mate for life." He lifted one of the female bunnies and handed her off to the ems sheep that were nearby. "We have standards."

Judy found some black hair on one of the bunnies that didn't match the brown pattern of the doe's fur. "Bunnies mate for life as well, we just have open relationships until we stop having children."

Nick choked. "Open relationships?" He thought. "Would Judy cheat if we were in a relationship, would she be unfaithful? Would she even want to be in a relationship with me since I can't provide her children? How many men has she been with? Is it sexist of me to care?"

Judy coughed awkwardly and kept going. "I shouldn't even have to talk about this to a grown man, but it's only for the sake of genetic diversity, when you have as many kids as we do, you can't have 300 versions of the same mixture of genetic code going out into the world, it's not healthy for the next generation."

Nick nodded. "I guess that makes sense, but Judy, do you want children? Or, that many children? Is it really as important to you as the rest of your family?" He said, silently thinking to himself that if the answer was yes, he was screwed. He couldn't give that life to Judy, and he knew that.

Judy thought for a moment. "My career comes first, but that's what female bunnies are supposed to do, being a mother is something we have to do, it's not a choice for us."

Nick scrunched up his nose, was she being serious? Sure he had a choice, she chose not to become a carrot farmer, she chose to become a cop, she chose to believe in him, she was a tryer, a chooser! Was childbirth so central to bunny culture that even the headstrong bunny like Judy couldn't avoid it?

"That being said," Judy continued, "It's too late for.." she was interrupted by a blood curdling scream. Josie Hopps had woken up, screaming like she was dying. Judy was immediately at her side. "Josie? Josie what's wrong?" Josie was clutching her stomach.

"Get it out, Get it out!" She cried, blood started pooling out from between her legs, staining her pants and the grass underneath her.

Judy looked around frantically and yelled. "She's bleeding, guys get over here!". The rotund ems sheep gave Josie a painkilling tranquilizer and rushed her over to the ambulance and sped towards the hospital. The radios on the sheep's belt started buzzing. "All of the previously missing bunnies are waking up and are in extreme pain..."

Other bunnies had started to wake up and were screaming, crying, or curled in on themselves, Nick frantically picked two, three, or four bunnies up at a time to get them into beds of volunteer's trucks to get them to the hospital. Judy dragged one at a time, her eyes wide and frightened. As the twenty bunnies were loaded and sped to the hospital, the two cops panted and stared at each other in the now empty clearing.

It would have been ironic if it wasn't so gruesome. Nick and Judy were both covered in Bunny blood, and Judy was crying. If a stranger had've walked up to the scene they would have thought that it had been an attack. Nick grabbed Judy and brought her close.

"Nick, what is happening?"

Nick grasped her tightly and set his snout on top of her head. "I don't know Carrots, honey, sweetheart, baby, I don't know."

Judy pressed her face into Nick's uniform. "We need to get to the hospital." She mumbled, but it was a bit muffled by his chest.

"Stay here a minute, honey, we both need it." He said, rubbing her back with his paw. They had both seen some pretty awful crime scenes and put away some terrible people, but this was Judy's own community, it hurt her personally, and even though Judy was very emotional, this time she had every right to be.

With the sad bunny's feelings in mind, he picked her up and carried her into the truck.

"Nick, I can walk!" She protested,but she didn't try to climb down.

"Nope, nope, nope," he said. "Sad buns are not allowed to walk, doctor's orders." She sighed and wrapped her legs around his waist and snuggled closer to him.

"Wilde, do not let your imagination get away from you." He thought as he opened the truck door. "Hey, Carrots, try not to get blood on Salta's seats, I'm pretty sure that he would bury us in his carrot patch." He almost laughed as she pouted about being set down in the truck seat.

The hospital was surprisingly a cheery place. Unlike Zootopia's hospitals, which were all white, with harsh edges and the smells of antiseptics filling the stale air, the Central Burrow's Hospital was filled with bright colored walls and the smells of pies and home cooked meals, they were known worldwide as having the best hospital food. It was underground, but light filtered through skylights in every room. It was only one level, and elevators went sideways to save time when one needed to get around.. The biggest department, of course, was the maternity ward, which was bigger than the rest of the complex twice over, and the cries and laughter of the newborns could be heard from even above the compound. The emergency room, however, was very different from the rest of the hospital. The kidnapping victims lay on beds with their own blood pooling around them and doctors and nurses ran frantically about them. Judy ran to a doctor she had known since her youth who was leaning over one of the patients, trying to find a wound where there was none.

"Doctor Ndovo, what's going on? Where's Josie? Can my partner and I question any of the patients?" She had to yell to be heard over the wails of the patients. Some of them were falling silent due to pain medication, but the majority were still terrified by their condition.

The elephant doctor sighed, put down her tools and gave Judy a grave look. "It appears they are undergoing miscarriages all at once, but none of them appeared to be pregnant."

Judy's eyes widened with puzzlement as the doctor continued. "My best guess is that they are all going through extreme cases of uterine prolapse at the same time." Judy gasped in shock as she realized what that meant. "This was definitely planned and definately done by a medical professional, now, if you would excuse me, I need to make sure I have enough blood to save their lives from bloodloss."

"Now, for those of us who aren't fluent in baby, what does all that uterine relapse mean?" Nick asked.

"Basically, uterine PROlapse is what happens when a uterus is displaced, or, in this case, falling out of their bodies." She went silent for a moment, chewing on her carrot pen for a moment before her ears went straight up in the air.

"That's what cohashed meant! They were all marked for miscarriage of the uterus itself! This was definitely planned" She pondered for another moment. "We should talk to some of the patients before we make any more assumptions." She looked at Nick and saw the black circles under his eyes and the leaves in his fur.

"But, for now, let's go home and get some rest."

Nick smiled sleepily. "I thought you would never say that."

The pair sped back to Judy's house. They ignored the frightened looks of Hopp's family, not caring that they were covered in blood and probably scaring the young Hopps children to death. Judy's mother grabbed her daughter's paw. "Did you find her?"

Judy looked at her mother sadly. "Yes, she's alive, and she's getting a checkup at the hospital, they will keep her for a few more days until she's ready to come home."

Mrs. Hopps placed her paw over her heart. "Oh thank goodness, can we go see her?"

Judy rubbed the back of her neck, she didn't want her mom to worry. "Not yet, it's an active investigation and we don't want the bunnies to see anybody until we know what's going on." She gave her mother a kiss on the cheek. "I'm going to bed, mom, I love you, lock the doors tonight."

"I love you too sweetie, and I'm so proud of you, and we have daddy waiting by the door with a shotgun."

Said bunny nodded at the pair and lifted his rifle, obviously ready to murder anyone who threatened his family.

Judy gave her mother a tired smile and noticed Nick, who was watching the scene with a faraway look in his eye. As they trudged down the hallway together, he kept giving her a half lidded look that was more adorable than normal.

"What?" Judy asked, embarrassed that Nick saw her display of affection.

"Nothing." Nick said, giving her a half grin. "It's just that it's really cute to see you protecting your mother like that, it makes me miss my mom."

"Your mom isn't dead, Nick." Judy said as she entered the bathroom to take a shower. Nick followed in after her. The Hopp's bathrooms were more like gym locker rooms, they had to be to fit 278 people. The team got into stalls next to each other and continued their conversation over the walls and sound of water.

"I know, Carrots, but she hasn't shown that much affection towards me since I became a 'savvy businessman'." Nick stripped in his stall and turned the water on, slowly letting the red mud, dirt, and blood drain out of his long fur.

Judy quickly rinsed, shampooed, and got dressed in her favorite pajamas.. Being a short haired rabbit had it's perks. "Hasn't she changed since you became a cop?" She said as she dried her ears off with a towel.

Nick, who was in the process of conditioning his long tail, answered her slowly, choosing his words carefully. "She wants to see me settled down, now that she is getting sick she says she wants to see her grandkids before she dies."

Judy laughed. "Nicholas Piberius Wilde, a family man, that's a pretty picture." She paused for a moment, it was a pretty picture, one that she wanted to be a part of. "I guess you better start getting out there and seeing more vixens then, huh."

Nick gave her a sly grin, even though she couldn't see it through the stall door. "Well, according to you, the fastest way to get grandkids is to marry a bunny, so since you're the cutest bunny I know, would you marry me?"

Judy banged on his stall door, pretending to be angry. "Nick! How dare you ask me to marry you inside a bathroom while you are naked? That is soooo not romantic! Leave it to a dumb fox to mess up a marriage proposal, I suppose you dropped the ring down the shower drain?"

Nick stepped out of the shower with a towel wrapped around his waist. "Well, Carrots, this is romantic enough for me, the only problem with this situation is that I'm the only one naked in this joint."

Judy blushed and a small "eek" escaped her lips, but she regained her composure quickly. "This is my parent's home, Wilde, not a naturalists club, and I am very tired, too tired to marry you and definitely too tired to think about anything other than this god-awful case. Goodnight."

"Goodnight." Nick laughed, trying not to think of what could have happened if they both weren't so dead from exhaustion.

After sleeping through the evening and the night, they returned to the hospital early the next morning."We should probably talk to the one that's been gone the longest, Miss Karmen Conejita, she probably has the most information." Nick said. He looked around until he found the bunny that matched her description in the case file.

Miss Conejita was a black and white bunny from the Conejita Strawberry farm next to Judy's. She was kidnapped on the night she was to be married, and as she lay in her hospital bed she fidgeted and fingered her engagement ring on her left paw. Judy initiated the questioning, for fear that in her fragile state, Nick would be too threatening.

"Miss Conejita, we would like to ask you about the events of the last few weeks."

The bunny nodded glumly. "I will answer your questions, so you can catch the hijo de puta that did this to me."

"Did you recognize anything about your kidnapper? Did you see a face? Catch a name?"

Karmen wiggled her nose and spoke quickly, her accent was melodic in a harsh way. "Yes, my kidnapper was a panther, I didn't catch a name, but the man that did this to me," She waved her hands at her lower body, "Was a fox." Judy scribbled down her notes while Nick put his paw over his snout, another bad fox giving bunnies a reason to fear them, fan-fucking-tastic.

"They made me lay in a hospital bed for most of the time, we were all in the same room, all of us mujeres. The fox would knock us out, drug us up, he took blood, he never beat us, there were occasionally some nurses that would come and feed us." She shook her head. "The food was shitty, bland, and they wouldn't let us get up, we had to take shits in bedpans."

Judy wrote down every word. "Did you have any idea of where you were?"

Karmen rubbed the diamond on her wedding ring. "I know we weren't in the Burrows, it didn't smell like it anyway. It smelled like we were near some kind of highway, it smelled like oil all the time."

Judy motioned for Nick to get up out of his seat. "Well, we won't bother you anymore for now, Miss Conejita, we will let you rest."

Suddenly, Karmen grabbed Judy's paw and said "One more thing, the nurses and the fox doctor kept mumbling one word over and over throughout the weeks they had me, gaped, I don't know what that means, but it may help."

Judy scribbled "GAPED" on her notepad walked outside the hospital to get some fresh air. The green trees and bright sunlight were comforting, but felt out of place considering the circumstances. Nick followed her, pondering the events and trying to find some sort of clue or linking thread between them. "Soooooooo," He said, taking out his phone and punching in some of his own notes. "Some maniac fox is kidnapping female bunnies who are all about to or just have been married, causing them to give birth to their own uterus, making them incapable of having children."

"Yes, and, they seem to not want to hurt the bunnies themselves, just make them infertile, which means this isn't a maniac, this almost methodical,"

Salta's voice could be heard on their walkie-talkies. "Twins Scarlett and Charlotte Boinge have been reported missing off the Boinge blueberry farm."

"Damn it!" Judy screamed, her foot was tap-tap-tapping away. "This is a hustle, a scam, a system, some speciecist freak is probably targeting bunnies so we don't have children!"

Suddenly she paused, her foot slowed down and her ears went up in the air, she had an idea. "Gaped! The Growth and Population Education Department! I studied about it in college when I studied pre-law!"

Nick shrugged. "Never heard of it."

Judy smiled. "That's because you never went to college and you weren't valedictorian of your high school, college, and police academy classes." She said. "GAPED was an attempt at a population control department that was discussed in Congress a couple years back but was shot down." She looked at Nick, "you don't think?"

"Yes, yes I do." Nick said. "The government is the greatest con of all time, they would definitely go under the table for a controversial subject like that."

"Holy shit." Judy said. "The government is targeting bunnies!"

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